SA_tx_88116
Rather listen than stream
Are subdivision dispatchers based in Texas like in San Antonio or is it all the Harriman dispatch center
Problems listening to railways and questions on how railways use radios
- Thread starter SA_tx_88116
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19-685
Member
Great resource here....
Railroad Radio: Hearing and Understanding Railroad Radio Communications & Systems: Reh, Vincent: 9780965159906: Amazon.com: Books
Railroad Radio: Hearing and Understanding Railroad Radio Communications & Systems [Reh, Vincent] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Railroad Radio: Hearing and Understanding Railroad Radio Communications & Systems
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I don’t follow the Western roads as much as I do the Eastern since UP and BNSF don’t even have trackage rights through Indiana, let alone Eastern Indiana. However, a quick type-up in Ye Ol’ Google machine yielded this result. Seems like they have done what NS and CSX did. Eliminated regional dispatching offices and moved everything to a centralized location. NS’s dispatching HQ is in Atlanta, GA, and CSX’s in Jacksonville, FL.
SA_tx_88116
Rather listen than stream
So the dispatcher I hear on the radio is no where near Texas?
Just like the CSX dispatchers I hear are nowhere near Indiana. Everything is done via IP over fiber optic cables or satellite links.
BNSF Railway‘s main dispatch center is in Ft. Worth Texas, so if you are hearing trains on the BNSF lines, the dispatcher is in Texas. Union Pacific’s main dispatch center is in Omaha Nebraska. Both Union Pacific and BNSF have extensive rail operations in Texas.
Since it appears you live near San Antonio, Union Pacific has extensive operations in your area, not sure how much BNSF has. It looks like BNSF has a yard on the southwest side of San Antonio. You can do a google map and see the exact location.
Since it appears you live near San Antonio, Union Pacific has extensive operations in your area, not sure how much BNSF has. It looks like BNSF has a yard on the southwest side of San Antonio. You can do a google map and see the exact location.
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Exactly, same with NS. Reminds me of a story in PA where the Allegheny dispatcher attempted to essentially stop an 11KFt train with no DPU on the side of a mountain roughly 20 miles away from Rose yard. These “remote” dispatchers don’t know the territory therefore they can sometimes make poor decisions. Back in the day they would have to ride the territory they were dispatching for.
jbhunt04
Member
CSX uses Verizon’s network so the dispatcher can open up each base station on the ROW, and communicate with the crews remotely.
Unless you're on CSX. All CSX mobiles and portables are programmed with a transmit encode CTCSS of 250.3 systemwide and the wayside bases will not accept a call without it.
12G actually...
(Not My Video)
And yeah, on CN an RTC still has to hyrail the territory at least three times to be qualified.
That’s right- someone recently got some decomissioned Kenwood’s from CSX and got that same PL from the codeplug. Pretty cool.
Edit: Looked back and it was YOU who found out about the PL. Insert facepalm here haha. I’m glad you posted about that. It’s pretty cool and interesting information.
Yessir! That’s it! Man I remember watching that forever ago, but I could never find it. Thanks- bookmarked.12G actually...
(Not My Video)
And yeah, on CN an RTC still has to hyrail the territory at least three times to be qualified.
lol. No worries. CN also does the same on some smaller subdivisions in Quebec. The mining railroads on the North Shore of Quebec also do, but they use DPL/DCS tones.
Dispatchers not knowing their territory got CSX in trouble back in the 90s. I don’t recall all the details, but it resulted in a train wreck. Shortly thereafter CSX decided to break the dispatching center back out to the division level, which lasted until a few years ago.
I've been reading old issues of Railpace from the 90s. Once CSX announced their intention to buy Conrail both CSX and the Feds were deeply worried about a UP-SP style meltdown. CSX's plan to alleviate that (in their eyes) was to go back to regionalized dispatching, which they ended up doing (plus keeping the Conrail Selkirk and Indianapolis centers).
It still ended up being pretty bad. Not quite UP-SP, but it was rough. The systems integration for Conrail into CSX and NS did not go smoothly to say the least.
lenk911
Member
To give you some history of the tones you hear. The system is called by old radio engineers like myself, a "birds on the wire" system. Railroad have their own private wireline communications circuits. Using one 4-wire circuit, they connect the base stations in a division or so to this one circuit. All the radio stations for that division route to the dispatch center-so it looks like birds sitting on a telephone line. In the analogy, the tones are use to select a specific bird!
To address each station, they usually use a 3-4 digit DTMF (touch tone) code that usually represents the mile marker location of the base station on that division. When a train enters the code (you hear it on your scanner), it connects the station to the wire and only that station to the wire setting up communications with the dispatcher. The dispatcher does it the same way but you never hear the tones because the VHF station is not set up yet. When communications are complete the dispatcher signals the station to drop off the line. Disconnecting from the circuit allows the dispatcher some relief from hearing unrelated MOW, alarms, yard and train communications on the same channel. They don't transmit DTMF tones so there is no station connection and no communications routes to the dispatcher.
Depending on FCC licensing or how busy a division may be, there might be multiple channels within a division. There is also a limit to how many stations you can place on a wire. So a large division may have its channel split across multiple wires routing to two wireline strings of stations for the dispatcher to monitor.
BTW: The same system was used by other corridor radio systems like pipe lines and turnpikes. There the telephone company or a private microwave system provides the 4-wire circuit but the technology was still the same, birds on a wire!
Wonderfully explained! Back in 2018 in Indiana, NS’s Newcastle District was “split” at Muncie. Before, both the road & dispatch were on AAR 22/22 from Cincinnati to Ft. Wayne. Basically it’s the same district/sub-division, it’s just dispatched by two desks on two different AAR channels. Cincy to Muncie is the Cincinnati desk using the original district assignment on AAR 22/22, and Muncie to Ft. Wayne is the Ft. Wayne desk on AAR 83/83 which was newly allocated. From what I was told by an NS employee, the FCC “forced” the channel move due to interference with the CSX at Muncie.
Heck, there’s a tidbit I didn’t even know. Pretty cool!
Depends on the railroad, but both CSX and NS today use a specific DTMF call-up to reach a specific dispatcher; the individual call-ups for each specific base station went away a long time ago.
NS did use a variation of the "birds on a wire" scheme back when the dispatchers were still in the old N&W locations (Portsmouth, Muncie, Brewster, etc). The base stations for a specific dispatcher were all on the same wire line, and used tone-remote tones to key the base stations; I still remember the low-level 2175hz tone keeping the base station keyed on the lines around here, followed by another tone to positively de-key the base station when the dispatcher released the PTT button.
NASA used a similar setup in the Apollo days (one tone to key the remote transmitters, a second tone slightly lower in frequency to de-key).
Some base stations are set to emit a DTMF tone at EOT. This is used as a unique identifier so it can be tracked which base station was transmitting when which is used both for even recording and for signal/antenna issue diagnosis. This is done with MDC on some railways but I know of some base stations that are not MDC capable and so use DTMF identifiers. They can also be keyed manually from the train (as previously stated) to call a specific dispatcher or location or could be used to activate a switch or crossing.
